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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547503">A World we Lost</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrenchmistake/pseuds/thefrenchmistake'>thefrenchmistake</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Forgetting, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sibling Incest, Siblings, can't be worse than the books, kinda happy ending ?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:23:16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,850</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547503</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrenchmistake/pseuds/thefrenchmistake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucy did not understand.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Edmund Pevensie &amp; Lucy Pevensie &amp; Peter Pevensie &amp; Susan Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie &amp; Susan Pevensie, Peter Pevensie/Susan Pevensie, Susan Pevensie &amp; Peter Pevensie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>69</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Lucy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Warnings: not a very happy fic, dealing with PTSD and such.<br/>Hope you enjoy !</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it - Proverbs, 4:23</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Susan and Peter were silent the entire way home, and on arriving they locked themselves in Susan’s room. She heard crying. Her head was still filled with laughter and her nose still smelled the fragrance of Aslan, she still felt his silky mane under her fingertips. Lucy was already eager to go back; she left a flower on her sister’s doorway without thinking much about it.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>When she caught them hugging too tightly not to hurt, Susan had mascara tracks on her pale cheeks, a quivering lower lip and Peter’s eyes glistened. She sent them a curious glance as Susan turned to wipe at her eyes while Peter told her that everything was fine and not to worry.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Her older siblings did not laugh anymore, and each smile seemed to be wrenched from them and tear them apart. She asked Susan, one night, to sing her a Narnian song and was met with snapping and anger. Peter gripped the raven haired girl by her wrist and led her away with fire in his eye and anger on his lips, and when Lucy passed the door to his room, she heard shouting and smashing. Her hand hovered above the doorknob for a while before a loud insult broke into a sob and she decided to walk away.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Edmund looked at them with something akin to pity in his eye, and when she asked him about it, he smiled sadly and gripped her hand tighter, telling her she would understand later.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Susan began to drift away from them, applying scarlet on her full lips and going out every evening with boys or girls instead of staying with them. Peter seemed hurt by all things from this world, drank too much to explain the way his eyes glazed over and his hands shook when Susan left them in a whiff of jasmine and a twirl of her dress. He went out, too. Didn’t come home at night.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Her brother and sister yelled at each other like madmen when Peter was caught with a girl next to their house, and she heard commotions in his room and noticed scratches on his arms and blood spots on her lips when they opened the door.</p><p>Lucy did not understand.</p><p>Edmund braided her hair and told her to never change, Susan smiled at her with love and nostalgia; Peter kissed her cheek and left lingering behind the feeling of bitterness. Edmund told her they had lost something, something more precious than anything in the world, and that she would understand when she was older. Lucy only talked of Narnia with him now, having learned it was better not to evoke the other world in front of their older siblings. And he seemed sad, sometimes, when she told him she wanted to stay there forever, when she told him she would grow old with fauns and visit the Western Forest and the Southern plains.</p><p>Lucy heard her sister cry in her room, saw her brother get into fights he could not win, followed them to church and watched them bend and break under the fierceness and lie that were their prayers and confessions.</p><p>Lucy watched them drink themselves away on occasions, scream at each other at the top of their lungs, not talk for weeks on hand, and seem more broken each time they fought and made up. </p><p>Lucy did not want to understand.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Edmund</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There is something shivering within his bones, he thinks, that belongs to the cold magical winter of Narnia.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Ok, PTSD and Angst ahead, so be warned.<br/>Enjoy !</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <em>Out of the South comes the storm, And out of the North the cold - Job 37:9</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>There is something shivering within his bones, he thinks, that belongs to the cold magical winter of Narnia.</p><p>There is something in his lungs, he believes, that is icy and freezes the veins and blood under his skin.</p><p>There is a coldness in his heart he tries desperately to fight, but doesn’t know if he has the courage to hinder it his whole life (he doubts it), and the place where the blade pierced armor and skin still hurts in the evenings.</p><p>In his dreams, there are white hair and white deers and white eyes, white lips who speak blue curses and he wakes up drenched in sweat but still cold, with the sugary taste of Turkish delight lingering on his tongue.</p><p>Edmund does not leave the house when it’s cold, except for school, and then it is with three layers of clothes and head hung low.</p><p>He’s locked in a dark, damp cell, and his siblings try to offer him warmth and make him realize he has not lost his family as well as his mind, but it’s not that easy.</p><p>And sometimes it’s too much; Lucy’s bright smile, Susan’s warmth, Peter’s hand on his shoulder. Sometimes it feels foreign and undeserved; Aslan may have forgiven him, but even He could not take the guilt away. That was the price of his betrayal: a feeling of uncertainty about his belonging in this world and this family, a feeling of being an intruder in what is supposed to be his home (is it the house ? The people ?).</p><p> </p><p>And he is so scared he won’t be able to keep it locked inside his head, that the words and fear and regret will fall stumbling down his lips, that he prefers to keep himself locked inside as well, inside his rage instead of risking it all.</p><p>He stays mute at school, gets good grades, gets good reviews, feels empty except for the terror. Except for the flashes of snow and cold ice walls beneath his fingertips, the harsh bite of steel on his ankles and the sense of loneliness filling in the cell and sipping down to his very bones. But the cell is in his mind now, engraved in it like the inscriptions in the stone table, and there is nothing he can do to break out. And sometimes he feels like his body is stuck inside a grave, like he’s just a corpse waiting to disintegrate. He has already lived a life, and although he did not die, it sometimes feels like it.</p><p>Edmund Pevensie is but a corpse buried under tones of snow.</p><p> </p><p>“Hey.”</p><p>Edmund turns around, surprised at the gentle voice. His hands close the book he hasn’t read yet and his finger are cold (he can’t seem to warm up these days) even where they touch the leather cover.</p><p>Susan stands in the doorway in all her perfect glory; raven hair pinned up elegantly, pale freckled face, full red lips and bright, warm blue eyes that seem to bore into his soul -he wonders if she can see the black hole that it is, and he’s scared it will devour the dying star his sister proves to be each passing day- and then she smiles.</p><p>It’s so tragically sad that he looks away.</p><p>“Hey Susan.”</p><p>She steps into the room like the vocalisation of her name is invitation enough (it is); she looks so beautiful and out of place it make this heart clench because he can see her pain, even if others don’t. The only thing truly broken in here is her, and he cannot help but think she does not belong in his frozen world. She looks like she does, though.</p><p>“What…” he starts to break his train of thoughts.</p><p>“I wanted to speak with you.”</p><p>“I gathered that much”, he says but smiles to soften his words. She does not seem bothered in the slightest (she never does).<br/>She walks around the room for a little while, examining his books and his map with a curious frown on her face. He does not fidget, does not get up, does not squirm, juts puts his book down on his bed. After a few minutes, she comes to sit by his legs on the bed, looks him right in the eye and states:</p><p>“I know you’re not fine Ed, I know you’re far from fine. But,” she interrupts when he opens his mouth to deny, “I just wanted you to know that I… I am here. No matter what. You don’t have to pretend if you don’t want to.”</p><p>There is a huge lump in his throat suddenly, too big to allow him to talk so he takes her hand in response. She smiles again, even sadder.</p><p>“Does Peter know ?” He eventually asks, quiet.</p><p>“Of course not. Peter is…” she sighs, lowers her eyes on their clasped hands. “Peter is too hopeful, too bright to imagine it. He hurts but it’s not the same. He misses Narnia like a limb, and thinks we all miss it a little less; he thinks you’re fine because you are a good actor,” her eyes find his for a second with the shadow of a smirk. “He knows you’re strong and he knows we’ll go back. But he’s so good he cannot begin to think about what you went through and what it all meant for you to come back here. For him, Narnia was all golden and gleaming happiness and castles and feasts. Lucy can’t notice,” she says when he opens his mouth again, and a sigh of relief leaves his lungs.“Couldn’t even if she wanted to. She’s innocent and thinks Narnia is Paradise. She loves it with her whole heart and… They forgot the White Witch so quickly, Ed, they cannot imagine you still… You’re still affected. It’s not that they don’t care, because of course they do. I just don’t think they could understand, even if you explained it.”</p><p>“But you do,” (and without a confession). There is a question in the statement as well; he’s asking how, and why, and when.</p><p>She looks him in the eye -there is something dark and gleaming in her pupils that testifies of a hurting soul- and says: “I do.”</p><p>“How could you notice ?”</p><p>“Because I see how you bend your head and withdraw from us; how you shiver even in front of the fire. I know you have nightmares and… God, I hate her so much for doing this to you, Ed. I can still… I can still see you bleeding out in the field and… I hate her so much.”</p><p>His eyes are brimmed with tears and he grips her hand tighter because he had no idea she <em>knew</em>.</p><p>“And I know how cruel the world can be, both Narnia and this one, and how cruel you can be with yourself. So, I guess I just came to make sure you know that we love you no matter what, the ugly and the broken included. You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to be our brother. You’ve been forgiven the moment you came back and you don’t deserve to punish yourself like that. You don’t deserve any of it.”</p><p>Edmund lurches forward and hugs her, the only way he can say what he wants to say; he has never really known how to express his feelings, especially gratitude. He has a way with words, sure, that was his skill once; but words to comfort, not manipulate ? To thank, not to provoke ?</p><p>Peter was the one with inspiring speeches and full-hearted confessions.</p><p>Susan holds him close and lets the violent sobs wrenched from his body shake hers too.</p><p>And it’s a type of freedom he has never known, to let the pain blurt out and let it run. It feels less like he’s trapped and more like he will, one day, learn to carry the iron chains without breaking under their weight. And Susan treads her finger in his hair, murmures some comfort while he lets it all out.</p><p> </p><p>When it is done and he pulls away, his stomach loosened from the knots it was tied into, she smiles at him and he feels like crying all over again, but also feels like it’s gonna be ok.</p><p>“I see you too, you know.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>And it was so simple, yet it brings a whole new light to him, that seems to melt the coldest piles of snow stuck to the corners of his mind. Maybe that is what Susan does, after all. Makes the worst things better, makes you see the light awaiting at the end of the coldest, loneliest winter.</p><p>“I love you,” he utters out, and her smile is still tragic but so beautiful and she understands the unsaid.</p><p>“We know.”</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t… I don’t know how to make it better.” He confesses. “It’s just everywhere. Everywhere I look, and as soon as I taste something sweet I just… I’m back there. And I can’t figure out how to get better.”</p><p>“You don’t have to figure it out now; or alone. Will you walk with me ?”</p><p>He wants to say no, because the trees are newly covered in snow and the streets are white and the people are glad and happy, of all things. He’s afraid.</p><p>But he nods, and her smile is a reward of itself. He knows how people see his sister, the beautiful porcelain doll, secretive and cold, but she is the warmest and kindest of them all, and Edmund admires her so much for so many things.</p><p>Peter and Lucy jump on the occasion and go out with them, already running in the snow and designing convoluted snowballs before lunging them at each other, laughing, and doing it again.</p><p>Beside him, Susan watches with a smile -she smiles a lot, but almost never like she means it, like it warms her heart and bursts out of her; or he supposes only Peter can make her feel like it’s real-. Edmund keeps his eyes on his shoes. The wide white piles make him sick; he can feel the pressure on his cheeks where her fingertips are craved, and frosty bites on his wrists where the iron had stayed. By a trick of the lamp’s light reflecting on his shoe, on the snow, he sees the gleaming knife itching close to his throat (he can almost hear her laugh).</p><p>His steps falter.</p><p>Susan links her arm to his, huddles against him.</p><p>“You’re ok. Look.”</p><p>He does, because she is confident and it makes hope rise in him even as the snow crushes him down. He looks at the trees; at the flakes in his sister’s lashes and hair; at Peter and Lucy running and their wide eyes filled with mirth.</p><p>“It’s beautiful, isn’t it ?”</p><p>He almost snaps, almost turns on his heels and goes back; but Susan’s hold gives him warmth and their siblings’ laughter warm his heart, so he walks. He thinks she might be the most broken of them all; she has just gotten far better at hiding it.</p><p>It is silent in the street, in the hole city it seems, except for their exclamations. The sun is down. It’s cold. And yet, he keeps on walking.</p><p>Then Peter walks besides them, asks something. Susan begins to answer but Edmund sees the glint in his brother’s eye. He disentangles his arm from hers.</p><p>When Peter grabs her and holds her up by the waist, she squeals and wiggles to try and escape his hold. He is laughing, carefree, as he throws her down in the snow; she cries out but she’s laughing as well, and gripping him tight despite her insults.</p><p>Edmund feels a smile stretch his lips at the simple joy of his siblings; maybe they were not that damaged after all.</p><p>“Ed come here,” Lucy calls out, waving with her little hands. “I need your hep to build the castle !”</p><p>He throws his head back, breathes; tastes snow on his tongue; and, for the first time in years, it does not taste sweet.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Susan</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>“<em>The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.</em>” <em>Psalms 116:3</em></p><p> </p><p>It’s probably nothing, she reasons when she hears her little brother cry in his room.</p><p>It’s probably nothing, she thinks when she sees her sister desperately gasp for air in the too small place they call home -even though the feeling of being home isn’t, and will never be, here-.</p><p>It's not nothing, she cries when Peter grabs her arm and drags her to his room to have a screaming match where insults are thrown and confessions are wrenched from one another with furious and painful grips; those always leave her drained, throat scratched raw, cheeks hot from anger, eyes damp from tears.</p><p>When some girls at school whisper that she’s broken, Susan snaps back and stares them all down. When some boys whistle and tell her to smile, she answers with the finger and a snarling “Fuck off” that leave them astonished.</p><p>She plays the violin until her fingers bleed and her head and heart empty of all that isn’t notes on a sheet and melody swelling in her ears.</p><p>It’s just time, that’s all it is. That’s all is missing.</p><p>They just need time and it’ll be better.</p><p> </p><p>It’s not better, of course it’s not.</p><p>The school is dumb (she already knows all this), the boys are sweaty pre-teenagers with no respect for women and no honor, the girls keep on giggling and acting like puppies while taking orders from everyone, the city is overcrowded and still stained with remains of the war.</p><p>Life is dull, smoky, noisy, narrow. </p><p>She feels like suffocating in this house, so she sails to America leaving her little brother and sister with a painful smile and lingering hugs; leaving Peter with only memories.</p><p> </p><p>It’s better there, with unknown faces an places where she doesn’t perceive Aslan’s mane each time she turns a corner.</p><p>Education is taken far more seriously now that she entered a prestigious high-school, and she does not care for gossip or reputation anymore, so the first time a stupid boy tries to grope her, she bends his wrist until it breaks. She gets yelled out but bites back and suddenly she feels good again, she finds herself again.</p><p>It takes time, afterward.</p><p>It takes nights where she bites her lip to avoid crying out, where she fists her hand instead of breaking something. But after a while, her lips relearn the curve of a smile, and her fingernails stop burying themselves in the palm of her hand each times she thinks of a golden haired king and a majestic throne room.</p><p>In this New World, away from the remains of her kingdom and family, she feels good.</p><p>She writes to them, of course, especially to Lucy, her dear little sister who still speaks of Narnia like there is a chance to go back (not for her). And her letters are neat but her calligraphy is rushed and optimistic and makes her smile every time, because her sister is a vibrant, warm soul and she hopes she never changes.</p><p>Edmund is more restrained in his letters, but she can discern his well-being, his relearning his place in the world now. She can discern it, and she is so hopeful for their future she sheds tears, once.</p><p>Yes, she thinks, life is better now.</p><p> </p><p>She has to go back, eventually.</p><p>She is glad she will get to see her siblings, whom she missed dearly, but anxiety ripples within her the entire travel to England. When she arrives, her shoulders sag under relief as her body collides with a little bubble of joy who wraps her arms around her neck and yells in her ear.</p><p>“I can’t believe you are here ! Oh, Susan, I missed you dearly !”</p><p>“I missed you as well,” she whispers, breathing her in.</p><p>Her sister is taller now, her body is starting to learn its curves, but she’s still her little sister that jumps too high and laughs too loud and is enthusiastic about everything.</p><p>She grasps her hand when she lets her go, eyes sparkling with excitement, and then Edmund is here with a gentle smile on his face and Susan breathes easier, suddenly. She wraps her free arm around him, kissing his cheek.</p><p>God, she had been so worried, she realizes now. She had been so worried he wouldn’t be better, he would be stuck in the dark cell in his darker mind.</p><p>But his smile is honest when he pulls back and takes her suitcase from her, and Lucy is already babbling about school and the house and her room and chess Edmund is teaching her and Susan tries to listen to everything she is saying, which is not that hard once she gets pulled in.</p><p>The journey home is uneventful. The town has brushed away a lot of the ruins from war, new houses and buildings arise, but it’s still the same town, a little dirty and smoky.</p><p>But she doesn’t feel like suffocating anymore.</p><p>No, now Lucy is still gripping her hand, gesticulating and talking too loud, and Edmund is timid but smiling.</p><p>There is nothing more she can ask.</p><p> </p><p>The house appears strikingly small and peaceful when they get there, and Susan realizes she missed it, oddly enough. Missed the familiarity of it, the old wallpaper and the new furniture in the living room on which she puts her suitcase.</p><p>Her mother jumps on her as soon as she arrives, an apron tied around her waist and tears in her eyes. She hugs her back, patting her shoulders awkwardly, and then she raises her eyes and Peter is here.</p><p>All the air in her lungs flees out.</p><p>He is a man now.</p><p>He’s closer to the warrior of Narnia she remembers, further away from the boy who left England. Peter seems softer, as well, in his gestures that don’t hold any anger or resentment anymore, in the way he walks to her with kind eyes and smooth steps when she separates from their mother.</p><p>His lips are plumper, it seems, when he smiles, and his cheeks make the little scar next to his eye stand out before he wraps his arms around her frame and brings her close.</p><p>“Hi,” he breathes in her ear.</p><p>It’s hot, and his voice is husky, coarse yet silkier than it ever was before.</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>Letting go of him feels odd and risky, but still safer than the first time she did on the train platform. </p><p> </p><p>All of it is softer, now.</p><p>Except once.</p><p>Except the day she realizes the only career in front of her seems to be one of a pretty, mindless doll.</p><p>Except the day he wakes up from a dream of Narnia, soft curls between his fingers evaporating as he comes out of slumber.</p><p>That day, they are both on edge and aching and looking for a fight, gentle, secret looks giving way to blazing ones, curves of their smiles giving way to pinched lips and gritted teeth.</p><p>They explode a little while after dinner.</p><p>Thank God the rest of their family is scattered through the rooms, otherwise they would be collateral damage to their pain. </p><p>Peter bumps into Susan in the living room; it goes downwards from there. The house is too quiet, so they fill it with too loud reproaches and insincere insults, accusations and empty words.</p><p>And suddenly, in the middle of a scream, it bursts out, the real reason of her leaving, of their fighting and of everything that has been wrong, slightly off since they came “back”.</p><p>“You know what ?" Peter snaps. "This is bullshit. All of <em>this" </em>he says, gesturing towards her face and then her body, "is just an act." </p><p>"What ?"</p><p>"You’re just acting and the worst is that you’re beginning to believe in the part you’re playing.”</p><p>“Oh, so you can think of yourself as a man by picking up fights, by playing the man of the house but I’m the one acting now ?” She chuckles humorlessly. </p><p>“Yes ! You keep putting on a false smile and shipping off to America like everything is fine and then coming back and…”</p><p>“I left because I needed to !”</p><p>“I needed you !” He replies, harsher than he intended and shocked at the tremor in his voice.</p><p>“That’s not true. That hasn’t been true in a long time." She is choked up now, tears threatening to spill and even though she tells herself they're out of anger, deeply she knows they're not.</p><p>“You’re just acting,” he repeats despite the fury mounting up in her eyes and her fists. “You put on an innocent face and you brush it all off. You brushed it all off,” he says again, hoarser. “All of it. You can’t even…”</p><p>“I did not forget !” She yells, not caring if anyone can hear her. “I am not in denial, or whatever you want to call it, so stop, stop pretending I chose this, that I can’t remember !”</p><p>“Then go on,” he challenges, furious. “Sing me a song of love and death, if you can find your voice.”</p><p>She opens her mouth and finds out she cannot, despite her will, despite the longing settled between her ribs and the desperation in his eyes. </p><p>“That’s what I thought,” he says, but it’s hollow and he’s crying; she realizes she is, too.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She is sorry, but she doesn’t know what to apologize for and what he wants her to say, so she doesn’t say anything at all, and it feels like they are miles apart, further away from each other in all the ways that matter.</p><p>They avoid talking because guilt and regret know them too well, and if they open their mouths again, the lives they carefully shaped for themselves will shrink and cave in and disappear into oblivion. So their conversations are rare and eye-contact even rarer despite their fingers twitching and their hands reaching out and their ribs hurting every time they turn away.</p><p>Then church happens.</p><p>Before she knows it, her heart is getting crushed and built up again at the same time, with every kiss he plants on her mouth and every memory he whispers in her ear. The ache in her pain is fainter than when she left, but definitely there. Bearable.</p><p>She doesn’t really like it.</p><p>She would get on her knees and pray in church all day if she thought it could help, but she doesn’t; and the only way she confesses to anything is when he kisses her neck and grips her body tight and makes her gasp and her heart burst; then, she admits to things that eat at her and render her mute and deaf to prayers andchoir’s cries. And she confesses, even though she’s not a sinner, even though he’s not a saint, but priests could never get her to pray this hard.</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t know how it will end, if it will consist of broken hearts and broken minds, or of finally freed souls and honest smiles. They thought they had found it, once, this peace they were always yearning for, but maybe, just maybe, they need to find it again.</p><p>Together this time.</p><p>She doesn’t know how it’ll end, if she’ll like it or not.</p><p>But she sure as hell will try to get what she wants.</p><p> </p><p>(And maybe, just maybe what they want and need are the same things)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Thank you all for reading, I'm so sorry for the delay ! I lacked inspiration apparently, and I'm not really happy with the result. I'll try to publish next chapter quicker.<br/>I tried (really, I did) to keep focus on Susan and the entire family but hey, when you're obsessed, you're obsessed, so.... Couldn't stop from writing Susan/Peter.<br/>Hope you enjoyed !</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Peter</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>When Susan leaves, Peter doesn’t say anything, just watches her go, fighting against every instinct he has and everything he believes in (family, he believed in family before all), and it feels like tearing his own heart out. </p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p><em>“And thou shalt make unto it a border of an hand breadth round about, and thou shalt make a golden crown to the border thereof round about.”</em> Exodus, 25:25</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When Susan leaves, Peter doesn’t say anything, just watches her go, fighting against every instinct he has and everything he believes in (family, he believed in family before all), and it feels like tearing his own heart out.</p>
<p>But maybe it’s also for the best, though it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.</p>
<p>He was a High-king of Narnia, was a warrior and a general, a brother and a lover, and with every step Susan takes away from him, it feels like she strips him of each title and each layer of his own identity until he’s left bare.</p>
<p>A clean slate, filled only with regrets and painful memories.</p>
<p>It doesn’t feel like moving forward, far from it.</p>
<p>It feels like being left behind.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Coming back to the house of Professor Kirke feels like both the toll of a death knell and a rebirth.</p>
<p>It is odd, to say the least, arriving there alone with the memories of Lucy’s hand in his and Edmund’s annoying complaints and Susan’s sad eyes roaming over the grounds.</p>
<p>The house hasn’t changed, but Peter has, and finds it so much smaller than the first time.</p>
<p>It appears bleaker now, too. Away from the picture of a safe heaven far-flung from the war, it now represents everything Peter lost and he is not sure he can handle it for long.</p>
<p>He will try as hard as he can, of course.</p>
<p>But trying had never warranted victory of any kind.</p>
<p>In any case, Peter smiles at Professor Kirke, shakes his hand, and thanks him for taking him in once again. He can see the questions and the thirst for knowledge lurking in the other man’s eyes, but he proves himself to be a better person than Peter is, for he simply nods and shows him to his room.<br/>
Despite his evident curiosity, Kirke rarely asks anything at all about Narnia (but he slips in Peter’s nightstand a little key, and the young man doesn’t have to think to know what it is). From then on, this key finds its place in his breast pocket, sometimes burning with temptation and other times throbbing with melancholy.</p>
<p>Peter remembers everything about Narnia. How his brother was his closest friend, his confident, the one he could rely on despite the occasional disagreements. How his little sister blossomed into a grown, beautiful, smart woman who was admired by all for everything she was and the way she found beauty in every little thing of the world that was hers for the taking.</p>
<p>The accuracy of his memories only sharpens the pain.</p>
<p>Peter wishes he could draw like Lucy, Lucy whose fingers hold all the talent of this world and the next through sheer will and unwavering faith. That way, maybe he could relive it instead of reminiscing all the things he’s lost to gold and blood.</p>
<p>It feels like a small apocalypse in its own way, the rumbling in his bones and the sharp pain in his skull when something too bright reminds him of Susan with the sun like a golden halo around her raven hair. This, this might be the most beautiful, painful and most honest memory of their world, and he cherishes it more than anything else.</p>
<p>They were standing at the edge of the world; his fingers itched, to touch the burning sun or her, he did not know.</p>
<p>“Do you think we will be alright ?” She asked him, the first selfish thing she had thought of since they became king and queen.</p>
<p>The red sunlight casted shadows akin to bloody shades on her skin, and he thought her beautiful then, too. Even in her grief, even in the wake of Aslan’s destructive revelation that this world would never be theirs anymore, she was regal.</p>
<p>“I don’t know.”</p>
<p>She nodded, like it was expected.</p>
<p>After all, she was always the one with all the answers.</p>
<p>“I miss Cair Paravel,” Susan whispered, confession carrying whispers of the Ancient Times.</p>
<p>Peter knew what she meant, knew that even if their attachment to this world would never fade, the country they had landed in was not theirs, not exactly. To this era, to these people, they had been stories, they had been tales of valor and courage and golden castles and talking animals. They had been legends. But with their arrival, the words of history books were suddenly fleshed out and the truth led to disappointment.</p>
<p>Peter knew what she meant, because he missed it, too.</p>
<p>He missed Lucy throwing feasts and balls for all the magical creatures, he missed the stupid games of hide and seek they would play throughout the entire castle under the rolling eyes of panthers and fauns. He missed Edmund whispering in his ear sharp jokes about this daft Lord or another in the middle of a political meeting. He missed the heat of battle and the glee of victory.</p>
<p>He missed Susan’s presence in his bed most of all, but he would not tell her that, not here and not now. Probably never.</p>
<p>No matter the sun’s golden halo rendering her black hair even darker, no matter the faint weakness appearing in his chest at the sight of her looking like an angel despite the utter loss she must be feeling.</p>
<p>“I miss it as well.”</p>
<p>Susan smiled as an answer to all the things left unsaid, all the pain and grief they would not speak of lest they shatter and never be put back together again.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>His sorrow does not lessen with time.</p>
<p>Work stows a bit of it away, for a short while, hiding from himself and not from the Professor.</p>
<p>On such a day where Oreius’ deep voice whisper in his ear and Mr Tumnus’ laughter echoes in the room, Peter escapes his study like he’s never fled anything before (except London; except his sister). But the garden itself, despite its vastitude and abundant botanical wildlife, cannot erase the spots of blood or the gleaming blur of the azure Sea, and so Peter gives up trying and closes his eyes, letting the explosions of bright red and white blind the picture of raven hair and striking eyes.</p>
<p>“I see you’ve given up on work.”</p>
<p>His eyes snap open at the Professor’s warm voice. This last smiles at him with mischief, as he always does, before sitting on the bench at his side, leaned all the way back. He supposes they make a picture of startling contrast, both of them side by side, an old man full of life and a young man knowing death far too well.</p>
<p>“I don’t feel like working right now.”</p>
<p>“Would you mind a walk ?”</p>
<p>“Don’t feel like walking, either.”</p>
<p>“Remains only the game as the last passion of worn-out souls,” Kirke smiles.</p>
<p>“Games cannot take my mind off of where it’s stuck, old man.”</p>
<p>He expects a well-woven lecture, one born of endless nights writing frenetically at candle light, but instead the Professor inhales, seemingly taking in the roses’ perfume and the fresh air, and then says:</p>
<p>“I have been where you are, Mr Pevensie.”</p>
<p>Peter contains a snort, but it is not from lack of desire, more out of respect. His hands come up to cover his eyes, shielding them from the sun and the too-bright garden reminding him of another time and another place (thousands of years ago, when Cair Paravel was still standing tall and was a place of extraordinary golden tales).</p>
<p>“Lost ? Alone ? Angry at the whole world ?"</p>
<p>“In love and harassed by bittersweet memories and wishful dreams.”</p>
<p>The sigh leaving his lungs seems endless and heavy with everything he dares not say out loud.</p>
<p>“Tell me of her.”</p>
<p>“She was beautiful,” he admits, palms pressing harder against his closed eyes so he’ll drown into the red and yellow spots appearing and not in the blue of her irises. “Sometimes I feel like she was the only beautiful thing I ever laid eyes on.”</p>
<p>“Maybe she was simply the sole one you noticed.”</p>
<p>“The only one I cared to notice, that’s for sure. It seemed there wasn’t anything else in the whole screwed up world worthy of my attention. Maybe that’s why I could not go there anymore.”</p>
<p>When he stops talking, he realizes his eyes hurt, so he takes his hands away. It doesn’t do anything for the pain in his chest though.</p>
<p>“There is a lot of beauty in the world, and the one blooming in adversity is the most captivating of all.”</p>
<p>“So what,” he grits out, “war is a beautiful thing ? That’s not very sensitive, old man.”</p>
<p>“No, no. War is a tragedy. But all tragedies have their share of beauty, do they not ? It might be a flower in concrete, it might be fireworks illuminating the night sky, it might be a young couple walking down the streets. There is beauty everywhere if only you look for it. Don’t you see it, young man ?”</p>
<p>Peter shakes his head, eyes fixed on the ground, throat oddly constricted.</p>
<p>“It is because you are filled with anger. It clouds your vision as well as your judgement, and as long as you choose to live with it rotting inside of you, it will shape the world in your eyes as it wishes. Anger is the worst kind of death."</p>
<p>Peter’s been angry for so long, that makes him realize he’s tired of it. Of being furious at the world, at Susan, at himself, of being resentful and full of spite or regret.</p>
<p>He won’t live like this anymore, he suddenly decides.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Moving on is hard to say the least.</p>
<p>He dives into work and research, simultaneously aiming for a medical diploma and writing his book on social justice and the unfairness of the current legal system.</p>
<p>Edmund and Lucy chime in on his book through their letters, both craving something more important to do than mindless high-school homework. He knows they wish to accomplish something that matters, that makes a difference, and that cannot be found in the textbooks they are supposed to learn by heart without sparing a thought.</p>
<p>It is hard for his siblings, but Peter truly believes that his and Susan’s departure form the house will eventually turn out to be beneficial for the younger ones.</p>
<p>They will have their space to grow up, to settle back into their English life, away from the older’s shadows and their regrets and heavy grief stuffing the house.</p>
<p>Susan is still there in his mind, of course, she could never leave. He does not want her leaving.</p>
<p>But henceforth, she’s an afterthought. She isn’t the pang of guilt striking his chest when a pretty girl smiles too wide at him and leans too close for it to be innocent.</p>
<p>Like his shoulder after the duel with Miraz, Susan seems to become a phantom pain, making herself known from time to time. She becomes an occasional reminder.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, he writes and gets truly attached to his Professor, wanders the lush grounds of the house he had come to appreciate and even associate with a certain definition of home. It is not home, of course not, but it encompasses a lot of his life between its thick walls and creak floor.</p>
<p>Sometimes, despite the growing ache in his heart, he climbs the stairs to the top floor and sits in front of the wardrobe.</p>
<p>Those days are the worst.</p>
<p>(He will not talk of them, nor think about them once they have gone by).</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>When the mark of a year strikes, he sends his sister a letter.</p>
<p>It takes four days to write it.</p>
<p>Kirke laughs at him a bit, yet the glint in his eye reflects something akin to sadness, or pity, but Peter would never wish to inspire pity in anyone’s mind so he pushes it aside.</p>
<p>No nervousness transpires form him when he posts the letter, which is both comforting and baffling.</p>
<p>The answer comes a little after a week later.</p>
<p>In perfect grammar and elegant calligraphy, she tells him she’s coming home.</p>
<p>The same day, his suitcase is packed and he takes the first train to London.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Seeing his siblings again seems to lift a weight from his lungs, a weight he was not aware of.</p>
<p>In hidden whispers, they ask him about the wardrobe, ask him about the house and if the smell of pines was perceivable within the room.</p>
<p>Peter does not have the heart to tell them about the cold, lonely, desperate nights and days spent before the wardrobe wishing for a miracle with the absolute knowledge it will not come, so he lies. He tells them the coats are still hanging in the wooden magical door, tells them that one can almost see sunlight sneaking through the lock, that the smell is of flowers and summer and that the cold air they had felt the first time they were in that room has given way to warmth.</p>
<p>He lies and lies, and maybe Edmund is able to tell, but he will not say a word.</p>
<p>His brother is a better man than Peter ever was.</p>
<p>Lucy is overjoyed when he asks her to read the beginning of his book so she can put notes in it, as she can finally put her brilliant mind to good use.</p>
<p>Edmund offers him to walk.</p>
<p>When the men exit the house, the street is busy yet silent, each individual making its own way through town lost in their own thoughts.</p>
<p>“How have you been ?” Peter starts, because where else would he start ?</p>
<p>Edmund shakes his head with a little smirk on his face.</p>
<p>“Better. How have you been ?”</p>
<p>“Same as you, I suppose.”</p>
<p>“I haven’t lost everything in the span of months.”</p>
<p>His breath is shaky, his steps falter, and Peter hurts.</p>
<p>“Peter.”</p>
<p>He turns towards his younger brother, blue eyes speaking of more trials than anyone could ever imagine.</p>
<p>“You will do great things in this world. I know it. Don’t give up on this land just yet.”</p>
<p>“I won’t,” he promises, because he has promised it before to himself. “How is school ?”</p>
<p>Edmund snorts, passing a hand on his neck.</p>
<p>“Uneventful.”</p>
<p>“Are you bored ?”</p>
<p>“Not as much as Lucy. God, she’s always complaining and saying that since she’s not stimulated enough, I should be teaching her stuff she does not know yet.”</p>
<p>“Do you ?”</p>
<p>“Of course.”</p>
<p>Peter chuckles, looking up at the sky for a second.</p>
<p>It is grey. It is dull.</p>
<p>There is no future here.</p>
<p>“I’m glad she can at least talk to you.”</p>
<p>“We try to help each other,” Edmund shrugs. “It hurts me a little to see so much of her potential wasted by mindless work and ignorant teachers.”</p>
<p>“What about your potential, Ed ?”</p>
<p>“Oh, well. I manage.”</p>
<p>“Liar.”</p>
<p>At his exasperated glance, Peter explains:</p>
<p>“Mother told me all about your grades, and the promising future all your teachers rant about.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know about that.”</p>
<p>“I do. Ed, you can be whatever you want. You don’t have to drag painful shadows behind you your whole life.”</p>
<p>“Like you do ?”</p>
<p>Peter exhales shakily again. He is not good at hiding things he feels. Edmund and Susan were always better at that.</p>
<p>Peter feels things too rawly, too close to his heart.</p>
<p>“Susan and I…” he clears his throat. “Susan and I didn’t see much of a choice, when we came back. Our lives were… God, I don’t know how to explain it. It just seemed like there was no issue, you see ? We would be stuck in place our whole lives, we would just exist until it was our time to disappear. You can go back there, Ed. You know what awaits you. And I’m not saying it will be easy for you, far from it. But maybe it will be slightly easier, now that you’ve begun to see a light here, in England. Maybe leaving Narnia will not cut as deep as it did for us. I hope it won’t, anyway.”</p>
<p>They keep walking until they reach the outline the Tames, where the activity is more intense.</p>
<p>Both men turn around without a word, still intimately connected despite their time apart.</p>
<p>“You seem better,” Edmund dares say after a while in silence.</p>
<p>Peter allows a smile to show on his face.</p>
<p>“I am.”</p>
<p>Lucy jumps on them when they get back inside the house, asking out of nowhere:</p>
<p>“Is the window at Professor Kirke’s repaired ?”</p>
<p>Peter laughs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Two days later, when Peter has spent as much time as possible with his younger siblings (Lucy became fiercely good at chess, beating him three times in a row and Edmund’s sarcasm rivals that of Beaver), Susan arrives.</p>
<p>The logical thing would be for Peter to go get her, but he has an interview with an editor an hour before her train arrives, and he will not be able to make it to the station in time.</p>
<p>So Edmund and Lucy go together.</p>
<p>Peter does not stop fidgeting the entire interview, mind miles away from the speech he’s automatically giving about his book.</p>
<p>She is more beautiful and happier than he remembers when he finally takes her in his arms for the first time in more than a year. A year away has probably changed her worldview as well; she was never as angry as he was, or at least was always more kept together. Maybe America was less dull than London; maybe the buildings were brighter and the people less dead. Maybe she found herself belonging there, somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere that wasn’t home, that didn’t have any wardrobe or marble arches.</p>
<p>He tells himself he’s happy for her, and ignores the way his hands pull her closer as if she would slip away.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Society has both sharpened and softened her edges, as it appears, because Susan is colder than before but acts softer, almost docile, and Peter does not like it. He recognizes it for what it is : an act. And when they spit insults at each other that hit too close to home, he tells her so, strips her from the mask she always wears nowadays until she’s left crying and he hates himself more than he ever has. </p>
<p>Their argument leaves its marks on them both. Fleeting eyes and discreet shadows are all they see of each other for a long, long time, as the words that got stuck in her throat and the ones she can’t remember stay engraved in his own mind.</p>
<p>Sing me a song of love and death, indeed, the two entities that used to rule their world, their own lives, and that seem to have escaped her irrevocably.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Church has paradoxically become a laughable necessity in his life.</p>
<p>He craves it as much as he hates it, and resents all the believers getting on their knees chanting hymns even as hypocrisy rules their existence.</p>
<p>His life - all of it, in Narnia and in England - always seems meaningless, in church. Maybe that’s why he cannot bear it. But led by his mother’s gentle coaxing and his siblings’ hands and smiles, Peter has no other choice but to step inside the little stone-built church crippled by war and bombs, although his head hurts and the place is far too warm for his taste -suffocating, really, overstuffed with all the people’s fears and hopes and prayers under their three-layered suits and furred coats.</p>
<p>The vertigo only increases when he meets Susan’s gaze, right as his fingers finish signing the cross on his shoulders.</p>
<p>The priest is a white point amongst the brown people, battered by hunger and poverty, shoes cladded with mud and cheeks hollowed, and the bald man speaks of pain and charity from the comfort of his immaculate robes and the golden scarf across his chest. The hypocrisy makes him sick.</p>
<p>The sermon burns his ears for some unfathomable reason, and his eyes are drawn despite his will to Susan. Her chin is held up, contrary to his, almost touching his chest. Her eyes are fixed on the cross, and if he were anyone else, he would think her a pious woman, but the fact is that he can see she’s actually looking into emptiness, lost in her own thoughts that are probably extremely resemblant to his (blood contradicting thou shall not kill, gold opposing the Bible’s verses, pain and loss too great to count, everything and anything and nothing, too much for a young man and too much for God).</p>
<p>Unable to bear any more, Peter steps aside and discreetly makes his way to the back of the church, where he simply opens the door and gets out. Walking away has never been his strong suite, but England brings out things in him he wasn’t aware of, and the fact is that fleeing is far harder than standing your ground and facing whatever may come.</p>
<p>The cold air of the Sunday morning hits his lungs like a ton of bricks and the grey bleakness of the town has never seemed so repulsive before. In this moment, he wishes he never came back, wishes he never left Narnia, wishes the Wardrobe never existed.</p>
<p>Peter wishes a lot of things since Aslan informed them of their eternal departure from the magic land.</p>
<p>It never gives way to anything more than wishes.</p>
<p>Pressing his elbows against the cold stones of the church, empty except for false promises and lies cocooned in the shape of meaningless prayers, Peter lets his head fall on his forearms.</p>
<p>Maybe there are tears in his eyes, or maybe those are the same dying stars he wished upon, a lifetime ago.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter, anyway.</p>
<p>He has too many dreams about war not to let them sip into his reality, and they shape themselves as Susan’s face, and the color of her eyes, reminding him at every look of both what he has done and what he has lost.</p>
<p>Maybe it is the universe, then, or a cruel twist of fate, that sends Susan after him.</p>
<p>“Peter ?”</p>
<p>Laced with concern, her voice spurs him to look up and take her in. She seems more real now than in Narnia, but it’s killing him, this Susan who’s just a shadow of the silver Queen, who’s just a blurred silhouette with faded edges that doesn’t do her true self justice.</p>
<p>There is something in his stomach that curls and uncurls, melts into a pool of acid. It’s something that hurts on a whole new level, too old for his young body.</p>
<p>Before he has a chance to say anything, she steps forward.</p>
<p>“You’re not okay.”</p>
<p>He doesn’t answer. He straightens up.</p>
<p>“I can’t do this anymore,” he pants, pleads, as her tearful eyes rip him apart.</p>
<p>She is on the verge of saying “Do what ?” he can see it on her lips, so he decides to stop them with his own. And that’s whats been missing this whole time, an invisible wall between them.</p>
<p>With his eyes closed and her skin under his fingertips, it feels like his Susan again, even more so when her right hand grips the back of his neck and her mouth becomes devouring. Loving Susan has always been soul-consuming, but kissing her ? That feels like coming home (home, that’s something he hasn’t thought about in a long while).</p>
<p>She feels different than she did in Narnia, yet still the same, but she’s fiercer in her kisses, more forceful in a way that speaks of fear and loss and resonates with him on a level he cannot express.</p>
<p><br/>
Maybe she’s trying to belong somewhere, too, and finds her missing home in his arms like he does, pressed so close against her the broken pieces of their hearts can slot together.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Lucy and Edmund are far too observant for their own good, their eye accustomed to perceiving even the smallest of details, and so the shift between the elder siblings has not gone unnoticed, simply unaddressed.</p>
<p>They know this, between them, is like a house of cards that a simple word too loud or a snort too resentful can bring crashing down. So they whisper things in the dark to avoid screaming them at each other, and they intertwine their fingers when the street is quiet, and they put a record on to dance and laugh with their siblings who look at them like they’re everything in the world.</p>
<p>Lucy smiles brighter with them reconciled, and even admits to Peter, one night, that their fight and distance felt unnatural and wrong on so many levels. She kisses his cheek and smiles knowingly, far too aware for a girl her age.</p>
<p>Edmund does not say anything. He was always the quiet one, observed from the sidelines, until Lucy came and dragged him in.</p>
<p>But all in all, they’re happier. Instead of reminiscing what was and how Susan used to smile at him, he can now kiss the pouts off her face and create new memories instead of dwelling on the old ones. The publishing house calls him back for his book, assuring him a print in the next year, so he has some work to do to edit his work.</p>
<p>Except now Susan reads the pages spread out on his bed, lip tucked between her teeth as she annotates her thoughts on his words, and his heart feels too full now, instead of on the verge of breaking.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br/>
They are not okay. None of them are.</p>
<p>But maybe they’re getting there.</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Mrs Pevensie</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  
</p><p><em>“Kings of people shall be of her.”</em> Genesis, 17:16</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Helen Pevensie has been in love, once, before the war took him away and sent back home someone estranged. She is too scared to admit the look on Susan and Peter’s face is as heartbroken as the one she saw in the mirror when her second half came back from the front in pieces.</p><p>But the war spared her children, didn’t it ? That is the reason they boarded a train, that is why she remained in this empty house all alone with only fear and bittersweet memories as companions.</p><p>Yet their expressions are ones of veterans, so she averts her eyes.</p><p>She refuses to see the pain on her children’s faces, refuses to imagine them more broken now than they were before she sent them away, for their own protection; but it appears that no matter how hard she wishes to shield them, there’s nothing to be done.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Sometimes Susan will sing songs her mother has never taught her, her voice echoing an endless melancholy. Sometimes, Edmund will enroll his siblings in games she’s never heard of. Sometimes, Peter will <em>demand</em> things, not in an entitled tone, more like an authoritative one. Each time, she will blink the regal aura away, and blink again at his siblings’ easy compliance, though Susan seems to smooth things over when his voice is too harsh. Sometimes, Lucy will cook meals that she has never taught her, mixing unknown spices like she has done this her whole life.</p><p>Her children cry. Her children, who are not children anymore, cry for a place that is home (Helen thought this was it; she was wrong).</p><p>They do not fight anymore. They work together on the smallest things, and she sees the changes between them before she notices the changes in each of them. They support each other no matter what, like never before, are more open to touch, warmer, exchange secret smiles and secret looks. They swear things she does not understand, pray with a fervor that church never managed to instill in them.</p><p>One day, they come back from school, but it feels like they’re coming back from somewhere else, somewhere further away. Edmund and Lucy are laughing, eyes aflame with something she can’t grasp, while Peter and Susan step in behind them -always behind, always shielding the younger ones like a well-rehearsed routine- lips pulled down and a lost look on their faces.</p><p>“You are in a good mood,” she remarks at Lucy, who beams at her like she hasn’t in a while, and throws her hands in the air.</p><p>“Isn’t it the most marvelous day, Mother ?”</p><p>“I guess it…”</p><p>“Look at the sky, don’t you just want to run into adventures, to fight dragons and raise kingdoms ?”</p><p>Crooking an eyebrow, Mrs Pevensie does not point out that the sky is grey and that it will be raining soon, settles for nodding.</p><p>Not that it matters much, as Lucy dances around the room humming to herself. At her questioning look, Edmund shrugs, but the smile on his face is intimate, filled with secrets he’ll never spill.</p><p>So she turns towards her elder kids.</p><p>They avoid her gaze.</p><p>“We have homework,” Susan says after a full minute of heavy silence, and then she takes Peter by the hand and drags him upstairs.</p><p>They leave the bitter taste of melancholy in the air, so pronounced Mrs Pevensie feels like choking on it.</p><p> </p><p>While the younger ones decide to do their homework downstairs, Edmund poking Lucy’s nose every time she gets distracted (which is quite a lot), Helen Pevensie goes about her usual week’s business, making sure everything is done and tidy, that the meals are cooked, so she can enjoy her weekend. She has a meeting with her bookclub, and has to go to the hairdresser with a friend before the movies. She is quite distracted as she roams the house, basket balanced on her hip, looking for every wandering sock and piece of clothing.</p><p>She does Edmund’s room, Lucy’s, and jus as she reaches her first daughter’s room, she realizes both her elder children still haven’t come down. It does not catch her attention and, like usual, she does not bother knocking before opening the door.</p><p>In the second it takes for Susan to school her features, her tears are made painfully evident. There are marks on her face despite her desperate and hurried attempts to hide them, and from the doorway she can still notice the trembling of her hands. Instantly, Mrs Pevensie drops her basket and steps towards her, worried.</p><p>“Darling, what is it ?”</p><p>Susan shakes her head like she can wish the tears away, and when that doesn’t work, she huffs impatiently, looking away quickly. Mrs Pevensie takes her shaking fingers, cold to the touch.</p><p>“Susan ?”</p><p>“It’s nothing, it’s… Boy stuff,” she stumbles over the words.</p><p>“Oh, honey.”</p><p>Susan shakes her head again, but leans into her mother’s side when she sits down next to her on the bed. It’s been a while, Helen realizes, since she has been able to comfort one of her children, since she has held one so close. It makes her want to never let go in the hope it will shield her, protect her from the pain this world is bound to bring.</p><p>“Well, if he’s making you cry, he doesn’t deserve you.”</p><p>Susan lets out a small laugh that her mother recognizes as disbelief, a bit hollowed out, so she shifts in order to meet her gaze. It is a difficult thing to hold, Susan’s gaze, so sharp and intimidating, but there are still tears brimming so Mrs Pevensie won’t yield.</p><p>“I’m serious.”</p><p>This time, the shake of her head is heavy, like she doesn’t believe her but for reasons that escape her understanding.</p><p>“We make each other cry,” she confesses under her breath like Helen is a priest and Susan a sinner.</p><p>“Honey, that’s worse.”</p><p>Helen takes to brushing Susan’s dark locks away from her face, questions spurred in her mind like a thousand droplets, each small and insignificant but pooling together to form a lake.</p><p>“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”</p><p>The admission breaks at the end, and Susan brings her hand to her mouth. It makes Mrs Pevensie incredibly sad, to see her daughter in such a state, and so she kisses the crown of her hair.</p><p>She wants to ask “is he worth fighting for ?” But Susan has always been the smart one, making choices based on data and reason, contrary to Peter’s impulsiveness, and so she would probably be offended by the question. She would not tolerate her tears, were they provoked by someone unworthy. So Mrs Pevensie bites her cheek, presses another kiss to her head, and stands up.</p><p>Accustomed to her daughter’s desire to deal with emotions alone, Mrs Pevensie picks up her basket of laundry. Once in the doorway, she looks back at Susan’s features, those of a woman, those of a lover, and she sighs. Not for the first time, Helen is struck by how grown up and utterly beautiful her daughter is, not only in her features, but in her stance and mind.</p><p>“Love isn’t supposed to hurt this much.”</p><p>The look on her daughter’s face is too heartbroken, so she does what she usually does nowadays ; she leaves her be.</p><p> </p><p>Intending to ask Peter for some information -if a boy is hurting her daughter, she wants to know, and might play blind if Peter roughs him up a bit- Helen walks to his door next, except this time she’d rather knock than be surprised.</p><p>She’s surprised nonetheless.</p><p>“Susan, don’t,” comes the muffled answer from the other side of the door.</p><p>“Peter ?” She says uncertainly, keeping her fist in the air.</p><p>A second and two curses later, Peter is standing before her, dishevelled like she’s never seen him. His red eyes echo Susan’s and although his hands aren’t shaking, she can see the tense set of his jaw, the harsh lines of his arms and the tightness with which he’s gripping the door.</p><p>Her stomach drops.</p><p>“Sorry Mom, I thought…” after a second of him trying to find his words, he settles on blinking at her. “What do you need ?”</p><p>“Are you alright ?” She asks, although he is clearly not, although Susan is not either, although her children have been crying and breaking apart behind closed doors and she can’t do a damn thing about it.</p><p>Peter nods, clears his throat, and Helen counts four blinks before he answers roughly.</p><p>“Yeah. I’m fine.”</p><p>“I wanted to talk to you.”</p><p>For a split moment, he seems surprised, and then he completely shifts his features to business-like focus.</p><p>“About ?”</p><p>“Susan.”</p><p>And other things, so many things she cannot count them down, but her daughter’s name seems to encompass enough for Peter’s face to fall once again, for his fingers to tighten on the door he’s still holding, and for his eyes to drift to the hallway in the direction of her room.</p><p>“Is she…. What’s going on ?”</p><p>“Do you know if someone’s hurting her ?” Helen asks despite all the warning signs, unable to leave it alone.</p><p>Peter winces like she struck him.</p><p>“I… We had a bad day is all.”</p><p>It doesn’t answer her question, but it brings answers to others.</p><p>A few moments later, Peter closes the door, and Mrs Pevensie stands in the dark hallway for a long, long time, until she realizes she’s softly crying.</p><p> </p><p><br/>Helen Pevensie does not cry often. She does not think there is anything wrong with crying in and of itself, but the ones who have known the war and its effects are sharpened by it, worn to the bone in a way that keeps the tears from falling. </p><p>Her children have the same air about them. And when they cry, it dims the world. When they cry, Helen feels like a failure.</p><p>She watches as they tear themselves apart, watches Edmund and Lucy drift apart before crashing together again, watches Peter and Susan look after them like they’re everything and without them they’d just fade into nothingness.</p><p>It should burn her heart with affection; it doesn’t. It only spurs guilt, because the elder shouldn’t have to feel responsible for their younger siblings, shouldn’t have to roll their eyes at their antics before correcting them, shouldn’t have to dry their tears and listen to their fears and quashed hopes.</p><p>But she supposes they must, now that they shut her out.</p><p>She does not know what to do, now that her role as a mother has been taken on by her children.</p><p>She goes to work, but so does Peter now, even as he’s coming at the end of his high school years. Susan seems to rule the house and to be bored with classes, eyes lighting up when Peter shows her the books they gave him and the ones he managed to sneak from his library job.</p><p>They spend hours speaking in hushed tones in the study or the dining room, bent over books and maps and things she does not understand, and each time she wonders where this new-born passion comes from.</p><p>She does not like to dwell on it.</p><p> </p><p>When they leave, Mrs Pevensie is almost relieved for them. It is time they left the nest, time they found themselves and got rid of this pent-up anger and sadness she does not understand but can still witness battling inside them. Edmund and Lucy handle it with grace, although the house becomes quieter and their laughter becomes more rare.</p><p>Susan’s letters are always neat, written elegantly and methodically, a paragraph for each member of the family. She tells them of America, of the hustle and bustle of the city, of the music there, the food, how it is all so different from London. And if at the beginning, it seems a bit too clinical, as time goes by her letters echo more honestly with them, like finally, Susan is enjoying the life she is making there.</p><p>Each letter ends on “I miss you”.</p><p>Peter’s letters are messy, with stains of ink at the corners and ink spots where the point of the “i” should be. Some things he talks about Helen doesn’t understand, but Lucy and Edmund’s eyes burn reading he words about a wardrobe and fur coats and hot chocolate. Like Susan’s, Peter’s letters change over time and turn neater, just because he is not pouring all his emotions on the page in a jammed clutter but favors writing to bring them something other than news; a taste of the countryside, a reminiscence of sorts for her younger children.</p><p>And when they get the letters announcing Susan’s, and then Peter’s, return, Lucy screams so loudly Edmund drops his book.</p><p> </p><p>Peter and Susan are two strikingly contrasting pictures; where she is all yielding curves and smooth skin, he is a careful equilibrium of sharp angles and plump lips. Where his face is round and benevolent, hers is sharp and deity-like. He is flamboyant where she looks abrasive.</p><p>But both of them have this aura to them that their mother does not quite understand, this unsettling and captivating regal air that seems to have been fortified by their time away. When they came back the first time, still her kids but not quite, she thought it was just the war that made them grow up too fast.</p><p>Now, she is forced to wonder.</p><p>Their changes go beyond the ones witnessed in other kids; they have taken root and have grown from their ribcage to their words, have shifted their voices and their beliefs, have changed the essence of who they are. Having them in her home again, all four of them, reminds her of secrets hushed in the nights and fleeing whispers she could only catch the end of.</p><p>But it is still good. For the four of them, and for herself. </p><p>All seems better in the happier household.</p><p>Until Edmund and Lucy come back from their cousin’s home.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Hi everyone, thank you o much for reading, and for those who stuck with this story.... We're almost on chapter 6..... I wanted to stop at the sixth chapter, but I've got something planned for a seventh one, or another work in this series, I'll have to see. <br/>Hope you enjoyed, don't forget to leave comments, criticism is always good to take !</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Lucy</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>“<em>Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.</em>” Romans 12:2</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The first thing she notices is the hair.</p><p>Nowadays, it falls straightly all the way down her back, as she refuses to cut it off despite Susan’s attempts. This last still braids it for her when she visits, though, weaving the strands together like a tapestry of golden strings while humming under her breath.</p><p>But her hair, which was almost blood red before, when she was still too young to understand how many people died for her in wars that didn’t make sense, has now taken on a darker shade. It’s nothing like Susan’s raven locks, of course, but it has become auburn in the brightest rays of the sun, brown like autumn leaves in the shadow of trees and somber as Aslan’s darkest fur in the shade of the moon. Gone are the blazing strands set aflame by bonfires in feasts, that swirled around her as she danced madly well into the night, gone are the curls that dipped in Edmund’s cup the first time she tried beer, and gone is the feeling that accompanied them.</p><p>There’s no way to deny it now, no matter how hard she screams and beats her now straight hair into desperate curls that hang loosely around her face like a sad, dying rose tree : she’s growing up.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The second thing is her freckles.</p><p>She has spent enough time in the sun while in Narnia to know freckles will emerge on her skin, cover the ivory of her arms with constellations that Edmund used to pinch teasingly, while Susan rolled her eyes and Peter poked those on her nose and cheeks.</p><p>She liked it, no matter what the women from London said; she liked the way they made her unique, liked the way they trailed under her eyes in a way that made them stand out like two ambers, liked the way it covered her skin. It felt like a crown, like a cloak, like the sun had kissed her and didn’t want to let go.</p><p>Now, her arms are bare of ornaments, no matter how much ink she spills and pours on the desperately blank canvas, no matter the way she presses the pen down too hard on her wrist when she draws a bleeding rose or an umbrella.</p><p>She cries each time the ink washes away, as she witnesses all her dreams and hopes spiral down the drain.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>The third thing might be the worst.</p><p>For the life of her, she cannot sing Mr Tumnus’ song anymore.</p><p>It used to be the lullaby that lulled her to sleep, used to be the humming accompanying her to class or home, the whistling of cooking in the kitchen and the whispering of the hearth when the fired roared on the cold winter evenings. It was snow in her hair, Peter’s warmth, Susan’s smile, Edmund’s rare laughter.</p><p>Now it’s just a tone in a distant past, something she cannot reach.</p><p>She ravages her brains for days trying to find it again, biting her lips until they bleed, drumming her fingers all day, scribbling musical notes in her notebooks. None of it ever works.</p><p>After a week, she cries. Does something she never thought she could : she gives up.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Henceforth, Lucy doesn’t know who she is. She feels lost in her own home, lost in her own body and mind that she cannot outgrow nor flee. All her life, Lucy has been her siblings’ little sister; not as pretty as Susan, not as smart as Edmund, not as brave as Peter.</p><p>They had to look after her, had to pass down the things of life and the things of death, had to hold her shaking body after she witnessed her first battle, had to wipe her tears away when they realized Cair Paravel and all of its inhabitants (their friends) were no more. Susan played dress up with her and taught her how to use a bow to be the second best archer in the kingdom, Peter danced with her at every feast despite her endless energy and on her fourteenth birthday gifted her her first dagger.</p><p>Edmund, oh, Edmund has always been there from that fateful time in Narnia; Edmund refuses to leave her side, Edmund who brought exotic fruits from all his travels so she could feel like she traveled with them, who taught her to play chess so she wouldn’t be so bored when they went away, who gave her her first fencing lesson. Edmund, whose words are sharp but eyes are soft. All of these things make her who she is today, and so does -did- her trips to Narnia. Stripped from all that she thought she was, Lucy withers.</p><p>Edmund takes her apart one day, when he says like it is the saddest thing in the world :</p><p>“Your eyes don’t laugh anymore.”</p><p>And she knows what he means, and it’s not the saddest thing in the world : people have died for them, for victories that did not mean anything in the long-run, they have led so many to their deaths or mutilation, she has witnessed more dying breaths than anyone, has watched her family fade in the distance as their souls chipped away.</p><p>So no. This is not the saddest thing.</p><p>She breaks down in her brother’s arms anyway, because it feels like it is.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Through everything that happened, Lucy thinks the one thing that kept them together was simple : Family. She always believed family could be made, that it was not inherent to blood, and that her family, grown on blood and trust and trials, was stronger for it.</p><p>Now, she feels them slip, more and more, and she does not know what to do. Without her title of sister, what is left to her ? What is she ? Not a queen, not a warrior, not a woman yet, just a lost child crying for home.</p><p>Coming back, she had believed all would be alright, within Susan and Peter’s warm embrace.</p><p>What a fool she had been, still.</p><p>Now there’s nothing. She believed home was with them, but they kept running from her, to America and to work and to the wide world while it felt she was stuck in place unable to move. Her memories of Narnia are not welcome in this house, although she tries for the longest time to bring them back to life.</p><p>Only Edmund, patient, asshole Edmund smiles at her and listens intently to her tales and memories, and if she twists the truth a little, he does not point it out. Maybe he recognizes the shadow in her eyes, the flame that changed from hopeful to distress in a matter fo years. Maybe he needs reminiscence as much as Lucy does.</p><p>Maybe he’s just too broken to stop her, too caught up in his own loss.</p><p>There’s nothing worse than loosing a part of one’s self. </p><p>Lucy knows that, in that distant way you know words you read on a page, or a quote you’ve heard in a movie once. She’s witnessed it with Peter and Susan, losing themselves time after time in different continents, in clubs, in books, in alcohol, in each other.</p><p>But now that Narnia is well and truly gone for this lifetime, Lucy understands this. Once you lose a part of yourself, you lose all sense of self-identity, and have to start from scratch.</p><p>No one tells you that; that’s not the things you learn at school, but what you learn in the real world, where bombs land on your neighbor’s house and children are sent away with no guarantee of ever seeing their parents again.</p><p> </p><p>Narnia’s ghosts are everywhere, whispering in dark corners and smiling in the sun, laughing as she climbs down the stairs and winking through the windows.</p><p>She looks at Susan, blissfully ignorant Susan, and envies her. Envies her pretty dresses that look fancy to her eyes but not to Lucy’s, too accustomed to the luxurious fabrics of Narnia. Envies her red lips that stretch into false smiles easily, her high heels, her nylon tights, her carefree attitude. The knowledge that Susan does all this to forget about Narnia does not lessen her envy, on the contrary. Lucy would like to fix her problem with a cigarette, or a drink, or a pretty boy or girl in a club.</p><p>“It doesn’t help,” Edmund says when she tells him about it. He wears glasses now, which digs another thorn in her throat. “It’s not a solution, it’s just a distraction from the pain.”</p><p>“I could use one,” she admits from where she’s sitting on his bed, tracing idle signs on her wrist.</p><p>“You couldn’t,” he smiles, not unkindly. “You don’t want to ignore the pain, you want to move past it, you want to find something where Susan just wants to lose it in her tracks.”<br/>
“And Peter ? What is he trying to do ?”</p><p>Edmund sighs, but not out of annoyance at her question, more like the type of heavy sigh that is filled with sadness. He turns his seat to look at her instead of at his paper, and she’s struck by how softer he has become. Gone is the little boy running around playing tricks, gone is the selfishness, yet she can still notice marks of the man who led them into battle and played diplomat in wars.</p><p>He preaches compassion now, he preaches hope, and equality. He is an advocate of things Lucy can only dream of, and she admires him for it.</p><p>“Move on, I suppose.”</p><p>“Then why did he go to Kirke’s house ?”</p><p>Edmund smiles again, only sadder.</p><p>“They are strange people, our siblings.”</p><p>“Do you think they’ll come back ?” She asks under her breath.</p><p>Edmund takes a second to ponder, and that’s another thing that changed in the last years; he always thinks carefully about his words, their impact. He’s far from being reckless and hot-headed Lucy who dives into an argument without thinking.</p><p>“I think they’ll have to. But I hope they’ll come back because they want to.”</p><p>Her curt nod makes him smile again.</p><p>“I don’t think running away is the answer,” she declares while brushing her hair out of her face and looking him dead on.</p><p>“And that’s why you’re the strongest of us all.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She has a lamppost on her hip.</p><p>It’s a reminder, it’s a testimony, it’s all the things she has let go of when her hair started to change and her freckles faded away like so many dying stars.</p><p>She didn’t tell anyone when she went into the tattoo shop, and she didn’t cry when the needle marked her skin. Lucy traces the drawing more often than not, mind drifting away from wherever she’s stuck to Cair Paravel, to snow and to a warm house in the mountain where she ate sardines with her friend.</p><p>Edmund catches it one day, because of course he does, and his eyes are brimming with tears when she rides her shirt up a little to show him the entire design, but he’s smiling.</p><p>“Why are you crying ?” She asks when his fingertip draws the shape of the lamppost, and he looks up at her like it’s the first time he sees her.</p><p>“Because you’re growing up.”</p><p>Strangely, it doesn’t hurt as much as it used to.</p><p>Yes, Lucy is growing up, in the steps of her siblings. No, she can’t remember every element of Narnia; no, she can’t reach that land yet.</p><p>It does not mean she can’t accept Narnia, the good and the bad, the joy and the pain, as part of herself. It took a while to realize that losing it wasn’t equivalent to losing herself, but that the loss helps build her up and grow into the woman she knows she can become.</p><p>Lucy takes Edmund’s hand in hers and smiles like he has so many times before, like the future is spread in front of them and they can shape it to their liking.</p><p>“You grew up a while ago.”</p><p>He nods, biting the inside of his cheek like he’s holding words and prayers in, and Lucy tugs him closer until she can wrap her arms around his shoulders and bury her face in his neck. She thinks of Aslan. Of Mr Tumnus and his handkerchief, of the Beavers that believed in them before anyone else did, of Oreius and his oath, of Caspian and the weight of his lineage, of Reepitcheep, of Eustace, of Ramandu’s daughter, of each and every magical creature that believed they would become something more than common and bring something more to the world. She thinks of Susan, who’s still broken beyond repair even if she doesn’t truly remember why, of Peter who’s chasing ghosts and trying to find his place in an unsettling world, within their own house, of Edmund that has always stood strong no matter what.</p><p>She’ll make them proud.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re ready to go ?”</p><p>Lucy turns to Edmund who’s looking at her expectantly, a suitcase still in hand, half on the platform half on the train. Through the window, she can see her mother shuffling Peter’s hair a bit despite his eye-roll, see her aunt and uncle bicker, see her cousin and his future-wife (she’ll die on that hill) banter with easy smiles that speak more of infatuation than annoyance.</p><p>It’s easier to smile at Eustace now, at Jill, and at their enthusiasm about everything that concerns Narnia. She remembers being like this, remembers being taken with Aslan and craving his presence. It’s different now, but she believes it is just another way to reach him.</p><p>Her eyes finally land on Edmund, and the smile he’s harboring, all reassurance and pride, and not for the first time, she’s stricken by how much he’s grown. How much they’ve all grown, she rectifies, looking to Peter again.</p><p>“I am.”</p><p>She smiles, heart fluttering at the idea of adventure, of family, of all the things between.</p><p>Distantly, she thinks of Aslan, and how he would guide her to bring Susan back home. Lucy is dead set on getting her sister back, set on reminding her of everything they’ve done and everything there is to come after this superficial life.</p><p>Lucy steps onto the train.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Here it goes ! I really wanted to write this chapter, considering the first on in her POV wasn't long enough, and focused mainly on Peter and Susan, so I wanted to do Lucy justice. Hope I managed it !<br/>Thank you to everyone who stuck with this story for so long, and for the people who reviewed, it is always a pleasure ! I loved writing this story, and will probably add just one more chapter (but I don't know when yet), or another work in this series.<br/>Anyway, thank you all for reading, don't hesitate to tell me what you thought about it !</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. After</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>After, there’s nothing. <br/>For a long, long time.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Warning for the following chapter : Character deaths, grief, mourning, alcoholism (a bit), and especially a heavy, heavy dose of angst. Good luck y'all, I'm gonna go cry.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p> </p><p><em>“Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.”</em> Psalms 25:18</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>After, there’s nothing.</p><p>For a long, long time.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It’s quite ironic, Susan thinks as her heels click-clack on the floor and echo on the walls, the sounds accompanying her through the empty, endless corridors devoid of any life.</p><p>It is quite ironic, considering she is used to seeing death -hell, she was used to killing once- and bodies and blood covering hills, filling rivers, gargling nonsensical prayers before quieting forever.</p><p>This ? This is not the same; this has nothing to do with a battle and a sword on her side and her bow in her hands. Now, she cannot act. Now, she is too late (for comfort, for prayers, for any hope, for not being left alone, for dying).</p><p>The bodies look cold.</p><p>The table under them even more so. Just to make sure -she was always one for checking facts- Susan lays her hand on it, right where the sheet stops.</p><p>She wishes herself not to count the corpses, but she does anyway -that’s what she does, she’s the logical one, with all the calculus and formulas and definitions that can’t save anyone- and there is too many. Gill, Eustace, Aunt Alberta and Uncle, Mother.</p><p>Edmund.</p><p>Lucy.</p><p>Peter.</p><p>The urge to turn on her heels is strong, but fleeing has never been in her blood, and someone has to do this. Nobody else can. After all, she’s the only one left.</p><p>The first sheet comes up between the fingers of the old empty-eyed coroner, and she could find solace in the fact that Eustace seems at peace.</p><p>She doesn’t.</p><p>One after the other, the sheets come up and fall back down, covering forever the faces that accompanied her her whole life and made the world mean anything. Just before the coroner lifts the sheet that cover her little sister’s face, he asks her if she wants to take a pause, and Susan glares at him.</p><p>“No.”</p><p>It doesn’t waver, her lips don’t quiver, her voice is steel. Next thing she knows, she is staring down at Lucy’s face. There is nothing much to say about it. There is no blood, no bruise, nothing that could suggest she is dead, just the lack of this <em>life</em> that filled her every action. She notices her freckles are gone, and when exactly did that happen ?</p><p>Susan nods.</p><p>Edmund is next, because he was always trailing behind Lucy, always following whatever she wanted to do, and death couldn’t change that. His face is grey, and something tugs at Susan’s memory painfully -a discussion, his fears of being trapped between four walls of ice, the cold that shivered in his bones- so she pushes it down and down until her fingers stop shaking.</p><p>Susan nods.</p><p>When she turns towards the last body, she breathes for what feels like the first time since she got the call, like she has been holding her breath in the hope it would reunite them.</p><p>It is silly, and so Susan gestures to the coroner, who lifts the sheet.</p><p>The changes on Peter are baffling, his once golden skin now grey as ashes, his immobility making her uneasy, waiting, because he is always in movement, always running one way and the other and cannot sleep if he is on his back, so why is he sleeping now ?</p><p>Susan is grateful none of their eyes are open.</p><p>She nods again, like a death knoll, and the coroner talks to her then but she cannot hear, and a few moments later -but it feels like a lifetime, a lifetime of her living without all the people that are spread on the metal tables before her eyes- she turns around.</p><p>White white white were the sheets, white was their skin, white were wedding dresses Lucy dreamed of and white were the flowers Edmund weaved together to put them on all their heads, and white was Peter’s laugh and white is her pain and her world as she exits the room.</p><p>Once home, Susan faints.</p><p>
  
</p><p> </p><p>The funeral is an awful affair, and Susan is glad for her ability to suffer the politeness and clumsy insensitivity of society with a smile on her face. She is also grateful for her logical mind, which focuses on the prices of the coffins, of the tombs, of the funeral.</p><p>They are buried not even a week after the accident, and the church ceremony seems to last days as the priest sends them into the afterlife, one after the other after the other, in an endless list of names and wishes that cannot be granted.</p><p>Susan doesn’t believe in anything he says, wants to scoff, but her lips are spread in an affable smile that refuses to leave her face even as she speaks for the whole church to hear.</p><p>What an odd tradition, those eulogies, that put on display someone’s pain. What an odd tradition, but Susan does as usual; swallows her complaints and pretends it suits her as well as the black dress she wears.</p><p>Her speech is curt and sweet, draws tears from everyone in the church, and she recites it with grace and dignity because the words splattered on the page reflect in nothing the emotions that rage within her.</p><p>“So, I will keep living for them, because this is what my sister dreamt, and this is what my brothers wanted for me. I will live for them, go to the places they couldn’t, and I will know the whole time that they are looking after me.”</p><p>Someone blows their nose, and all Susan can think about is bullshit, bullshit bullshit.</p><p>The weather is a London weather, the sky cloudy and grey, and she thinks that it should be raining, for a little decency. And dramatics. Lucy would be outraged by this weather, would want the sun shining or the skies pouring, not this half-measure.</p><p>After, when there are eight new tombs in the cemetery, seven wearing her name and one a bit further away -poor Jill couldn’t count on her parents, so Susan dealt with her funeral, too, and the coffin, so small- people come by the house to see if she needs help, to bring her meals and talk about her mother and sister and brothers and to cry and apologize, and the whole business is unbearable but Susan bears it anyway.</p><p>It is only when she is finally, blissfully alone, that the silence of the house settles in.</p><p>The entire day was bullshit. She doesn’t believe in the church, she doesn’t believe in condolences, doesn’t believe in God and certainly not in Aslan.</p><p>The house is so silent, so stiff, like stuck in time. Susan moves mindlessly through the rooms, and eventually falls asleep in the living room, waiting.</p><p>(Waiting becomes a new habit; waiting for them to step through the door).</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t sell the house. Not yet.</p><p>She will, when the time comes, but first she wants to evaluate the economic and emotional value of the things scattered in it, and so one day, after throwing up, Susan decides it is enough.</p><p>Walking up the stairs seems like the hardest thing she’s ever done, an impression immediately disputed when she puts her hand on Edmund’s doorknob.</p><p>The order is clear : Edmund’s, then Susan’s, then Lucy’s, then Peter’s.</p><p>No wonder she hasn’t stepped foot in her room yet.</p><p>She will never know how long she stays with her hand on the handle, waiting.</p><p>Waiting to find courage, waiting for Edmund to open the door and ask what is wrong with her, standing there like an idiot.</p><p>He doesn’t, of course. The hinges creak when she eventually pushes.</p><p>Her stomach turns upside down.</p><p>“Edmund ?” She asks in the emptiness, just to taste the name again, because when else will she able to use their names ?</p><p>The bed is unmade. The curtains aren’t drawn.</p><p>The book on his nightstand is open on an unfinished page, and everything in this room speaks of unfinished business, of urgency’s messiness.</p><p>Edmund didn’t take the time to tidy his things before he took the train, probably thinking he would be back the day after.</p><p>How she wishes she boarded with them.</p><p>There are echoes of a thousand conversations rushing in her mind (<em>“I see you too, you know.” “I know.</em>”) and the cold is getting to her now. It is probably responsible for the sting in her eyes and the hitch in her breath.</p><p>(It only gets colder as she grazes the scattered books and papers, the chess board and the chocolates papers).</p><p>Lucy’s room is a representation of the child-becoming-woman she was; her bed is neatly made, the sheets tucked in all the right places, her clothes are hung in her dresser, her shoes are arranged in order of color.</p><p>But her desk tells an entirely different story. On the right side, there are pallets of paints used on canvases she will never get to finish, brushes of different sizes dipped in a jar of water, and attempt to mix pigments sprinkle otherwise blank sheets of paper here and there.</p><p>On the left side, where the window lets a corner of sun kiss the wood, a vase half-filled with water hosts a multicolored bouquet of wilted flowers. Her eyes blur so suddenly she doesn’t even blink to chase the tears away.</p><p>Lucy loved flowers, allowed herself to pick some every once in a while -<em>because if you pick too many up Susan, then there won’t be any left !</em>- and gave them all her love and attention, softly humming to the daisies, caressing the blossoms with delicate fingers, and pressing them between book pages to give them a long life -<em>just because they’re wilted doesn’t mean they’re dead, they just changed</em>- and she can see those, too, their flattened petals sticking out of the social law book.</p><p>It’s unbearable, abruptly, the sight of so many dead things that used to be alive, the thought that Lucy could see life in those remains but Susan can’t, can’t see anything but the way they all crumble and turn to dust.</p><p>She can’t bring herself to enter Peter’s room.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It takes four days to cross the threshold of Peter’s room.</p><p>Nausea hits her fast and hard right as her eyes land on the bed. On the record player. On the pages stuck to the wall. Despite him having left the house years ago, the pictures are still there, on his nightstand, the picture of their father on the bookshelf. Peter always, always looked up to him. In Narnia, he learned to be his own man.</p><p>And for what ?</p><p>The suitcases and trunks that belonged to her family and were not, contrary to their owners, destroyed in the train-wreck have found their way back to her sometime after the accident.</p><p>She hasn’t opened them yet, but in that moment she is grateful Peter packed away most of his things for the trip. It makes it a little easier to let her gaze look around the room. <br/>Not easier, really; just less real. Like before, it’s only once she is hidden away in Peter’s room that she lets herself cry.</p><p>After that, it’s still two weeks until she starts to pack their things away (each piece of clothing, each object taken from their rooms feels like an offense, and buries a piece of her heart with it). She leaves the books on the shelves, leaves the chess board, the record player, and the painting materials.</p><p>Susan often looks at the photographs, too, though it hurts so bad she can’t breathe sometimes. They look so <em>young</em> in all of them. No matter how broken they were, how they had nightmares, how coming back to England mostly felt like a slow death, it could never compare to the pain she feels now.</p><p>The certainty that her family is gone, that no more photograph will ever be taken, makes her shake all over and cower to Peter’s bed, desperately attempting to forget everything, from the war to Narnia. And so, spurred by that grief, she looks for an apartment in New York. The house will stay, of course. She cannot bring herself to sell it, despite how much she has tried to convince herself; this is her family’s house, her siblings’ leaving memory. Which is exactly why she has to move out.</p><p>It’s not difficult to find a flat, even less to find a job. Her face is the one you want for a receptionist, or a sales consultant in fashion stores, which is exactly what she ends up doing. Unexpectedly, she likes it. She likes the clothes, likes the fabrics, likes the way she’s able to embrace (to an extent) the woman she is becoming through helping other women.</p><p>Susan has always known fashion is not just that; it is a testimony of who you are, and a way to change customs in order to move forward. Maybe that is why she is attracted to this job, this world. She has refused change for as long as she can remember, and yet change smacked her across the face all the same.</p><p>Nonetheless. She has a job, and an apartment.</p><p> </p><p>She doesn’t believe in Aslan anymore, or any other name he uses. The knowledge he’s real is anchored in her and she can never shake it off, that is true, but she does not have <em>faith</em>.</p><p>How could she ?</p><p>There’s no hope, there’s nothing. All that matters now is the clothes she puts on in the morning and the scarlet applied on her nails and lips. She plasters smiles on, she fake-laughs like a hollowed doll but the only ones who knew her enough to notice are dead, so no one notices.</p><p>She drinks, drinks, drinks, but cannot let go of her practical and careful mind, and so she awaits the privacy of her flat to drink herself to sleep, hoping that the alcohol will chase away dreams and nightmares alike.</p><p>It rarely does.</p><p>When she goes to work, she is the perfect girl, wearing tragedy like a perfume, like a veneer everyone becomes attracted to.</p><p>On her days off and the weekends, she rarely leaves her apartment, preferring the honest company of a bottle of tequila to the false pretenses. <br/>Meeting Michael is a stepping stone, even if she doesn’t recognize it as such right away.</p><p>He is incredibly smart, humble, awkwardly funny and yet confident. She is pleased by his laugh, by his handsome features, and Michael is sweet to a fault.</p><p>Most of all, he doesn’t remind her of Peter. His hair is dark, his eyes are dark, his skin is brown, his nose is broad and his lips are plump, but not too much.</p><p>He falls in love with her easily. On her part, it would be easy to fall in love with him, if she had any love to give. The thing is, when you let your happiness depend on something you may lose, there’s no difference between losing them and losing yourself.</p><p>Multiple times, she is on the verge of telling him everything about her siblings, just to see if she can (speak their names out loud after so long, remember the little details and the grand schemes, just to see if she can rip her heart out as a gift).</p><p>Michael really loves her, and he tells her so, and she chuckles and kisses him, thinks <em>“you don’t know me at all”</em>.</p><p>It’s a weekend when he knocks on her door and she is passed out in a cemetery of bottles. There’s cigarette ash scattered around the room, and she broke a little mirror around 4 am, when she couldn’t stop crying and thought she saw Edmund in her blue eyes, dark hair, and freckles.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It should worry her. It should make her stop. It should.</p><p>But Susan does not live for others, and if she is quite honest, she still doesn’t know why she lives. So she keeps on drinking and keeps on smoking, never does drugs but is tempted more than once. She tears herself apart in the faint hope it’ll feel better, but it never does, even when Michael cleans the bottles she emptied the night before, even when he swipes the ashes off her floor, even when he tucks her into bed and holds her and she feels like suffocating but doesn’t pull away.</p><p>She doesn’t expect him to stick around once the facade of the perfect woman has fallen, but he does, and she know she does not deserve it. Maybe that is why she refuses to change.</p><p>That is certainly why he looks at her, one day, from where he is standing in her doorway. They decided -he did, because she cannot find it in herself to really care- to call it quits once he realized he could not help her. She is the only one who can help herself, he told her, and he is probably right but it’s been years and she doesn’t even know where to start.</p><p>She does not mean to be insensible, does not mean for him to look down at where she is spread on her bed in her nightgown, shaky fingers lighting a cigarette even as the ashes will probably fall between the sheets considering she kicked away her blanket, and see the picture of nonchalance.</p><p>“You cannot keep destroying yourself.”</p><p>His eyes are oh so sad, and Susan cannot stand it, so she arches an eyebrow.</p><p>“Why not ?”</p><p>“Your family wouldn’t want that.”</p><p>“They’re dead,” she snaps, taking a drag and ignoring her trembling hands. “Maybe destroying myself is the only way I can make up for me still being here.”</p><p>“Susan….”</p><p>It’s worried, soft, far too much like how Peter said her name to the wind, before kissing her cheek and letting there linger all the hopes and love he had for her.</p><p>She turns her head to the side.</p><p>“Leave.”</p><p>He might resist - she almost wants him to, just so she has a reason to throw a fit and rage and scream-, but he doesn’t, probably seeing in her face the determination, the pure hatred that seeps through her features and soaks the room against her will.</p><p>He does as she says, like they all do.</p><p> </p><p>There’s a dream that sticks with her for years and explains, partly, her love for alcohol.</p><p>The meadow is bright, the trees’s branches bend under the weight of the plump, delicious-looking fruits, the sun gleams on the grass and reflects on the river, and her siblings are more beautiful than they could ever be in real life.</p><p>Susan steps towards them, eyes fixed on their faces devoid of any bruise, any swelling, any blood that would be proof of the accident, but, a few steps away, she stops.</p><p>She is stopped, more like. No matter how loud she yells, how hard she tries, she can never take a step in their direction and is forced to watch them from afar, being happy and laughing as she cries her heart out.</p><p>Talk about a metaphor.</p><p>In any case, this dream is, apart from the few photos she has of them, the only way to see her siblings’ faces again. She can never decipher if they are young or grown up, like they were grown up in Narnia (they never got to grow up in England anyway).</p><p>So yes. Maybe she drinks too much. Maybe she pretends not to care when she stumbles home at three a.m with the only wish to see them, see them, have mercy and let me see them once more.</p><p>Through the years, she is forced to carry this dream like a burden.</p><p> </p><p>Sometimes, Susan likes to imagine her siblings, and what they would be like by her side in this era. Lucy would have many suitors, endearing and captivating that she was. She would get a laugh out of everyone, make it her mission to render this world a little less grey.</p><p>Edmund would be the sharp one, the smart one, the responsible one. But still the one to sneak sweets out of Aunt Albertha’s stack, to discreetly pass Lucy his glass of wine so she can taste it, still the one to take her hand and squeeze when she didn’t even know she needed comfort, still the one to punch a guy in the face for having made a comment about any of his sibling.</p><p>And Peter.</p><p>Well, she has never really known where Peter would go, who he would become. There is no doubt in her mind that he would be a successful author now, maybe even a lawyer if he had the knack for it. But essentially, he’d still be hers. And she would be his; she would be someone’s.</p><p>But they’re not here now.</p><p>And sometimes, Susan thinks, spread out on her bed looking up at the rain clapping on the window, neither is she.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p><em>“Then he said unto him: Come home with me.” </em>Kings-1 13:15</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>It takes years for her to stop feeling like she is stuck in time.</p><p>And when the world starts moving again, it is progressive, not abrupt; the momentum doesn’t make her stumble and fall, but allows her to get up on her feet and take wobbly steps forward.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>She goes to the publishing house and gives them Peter’s book. They accept to publish it, with a page devoted to the author, but refuse not to give her a percentage of the benefits. With the inheritance, her job, and the earnings from Peter’s book, Susan is guaranteed a comfortable life.</p><p>Once she realizes that, she has a few days of just…. Nothing. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, or her siblings to come home.</p><p>Neither happens.</p><p> </p><p>It says a lot that just when she has found her footing again, has accepted the fact that they’re not coming back, and has decided to try and live for them, Susan’s dream changes.</p><p>It starts the same. Always the same. Except this time she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t even attempt to get to them. She’s comfortable watching them from afar, analyzing every smile and every laugh and every line of happiness in their features frozen in golden time.</p><p>Then Aslan is beside her.</p><p>There’s no grand feeling, no grand reveal, there’s just nothing but content and then Aslan, at her left, exuding a warmth she hasn’t felt since she saw him last.</p><p>Her hand dares to shift just so, until it can lay in his mane.</p><p>“I am sorry,” she whispers without the bitterness that has been glued to those words for years.</p><p>Aslan hums, or purrs, a low rumble through his body that echoes through hers as they keep on watching her siblings.</p><p>“You have been for a long time, dear one.” His voice, centuries, worlds old, commands attention. “Maybe it is time to stop living in the past, and look forward to the future.”</p><p>Only when she wakes up does Susan understand.</p><p>Her siblings are not ghosts of her past; they are waiting for her in the future.</p><p> </p><p>She does not start to pray and go to church more, but there is definitely something inside her that has shifted, and Susan finds herself writing letters to her siblings, of all the things that she sees and dreams of and will tell them once they are reunited.</p><p>Those letters, some smudged with tears, others embellished with joy, lay patiently in the drawer of her desk.</p><p>There is nothing to be done with them, exactly.</p><p>Aslan seems closer than ever when she writes, when she breathes. Though she still cannot reach her family in her dream, she is content to sit and watch their features, shifting between young and old, hovering between every lifetime in Narnia and London.</p><p>She climbs the ranks in her job too quickly, and then she decides to make something for herself; she starts a fashion company and launches her own line of clothes, <em>“strongly inspired by medieval dresses”</em> the critics say. When asked about her inspiration, Susan smiles a secret smile, and thinks about Lucy in her bright dresses, pants always hidden underneath in case of an attack or a promise of adventure. She thinks about Edmund in blue and black, about the vests that made his jawline so much sharper and the way he grumbled when he had to stand still so the Court’s tailor could finish adjusting his clothes.</p><p>She thinks of Peter, Peter and his golden fabrics, Peter and the capes he would discard as soon as he could, preferring the lightness of his shirt (and sometimes, not even that). Peter and his golden crown, Peter and his golden hair, Peter and his distaste for too-wealthy things.</p><p>The reporters take her silence as someone protecting her secrets, but all can see how sad her smile turns.</p><p>The question isn’t asked again.</p><p> </p><p>There is a point in her life where the unnatural realization that she has lived longer without her siblings than with them dawns upon her.</p><p>It breaks her heart all over again, and she re-reads every single letter she wrote, crying at the foot of her bed.</p><p>The fight against going down to the grocery store and buying a bottle of vodka is a tough one, but she wins it, as she will win all the fights to come.</p><p> </p><p>(And when she lays in her bed, Aslan’s low rumble purring in her ears and flashes of sunlight before her eyes, she is far from afraid; she has lived a good life, a life she rebuilt from scratch and can be proud of, and now she runs through the meadow of the dream under their welcoming shouts, she barrels into them and kisses their faces and hugs their warm bodies; now, she gets to go home)</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Phew, here it goes everyone. It's the last chapter of this story, though I will write more of Narnia in the future. <br/>Thank you to all the ones who read, and especially to those who left comments, it is honestly my motivator. <br/>I hope you enjoyed this story, cause I sure enjoyed writing it, despite the angst and the heavy themes. These characters are so interesting, so broken yet hopeful, I tried to give them an ending that felt right. <br/>I hope it felt right to you as well.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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